War, Destruction, (Re)Invention: Legacies of Creation and Transformation in the Context of Global Conflict
Seminar Organizers: Devashree Gupta, Political Science, and David Tompkins, History
Jorge Brioso, Associate Professor of Spanish is currently completing a co-authored monograph on the political philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset and the Madrid school. He will spend the Seminar working on the chapters that explore war as a philosophical concept and investigating how war, despite its undeniably destructive qualities, has allowed for “new ways of thinking, being, and organizing society.”
Arnab Chakladar, Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of South Asian Studies will develop a new project on “War and/in the Indian Imagination,” which reflects his interest in researching fictional and non-fictional accounts of the participation of Indian troops in global conflicts in both the colonial and post-colonial period.
Louis K. Epstein, Assistant Professor of Music, St. Olaf College will revise two chapters from his book-in-progress, Markets and Modernism: Funding New Music in France, 1909-1939. The book investigates aesthetic responses to the turbulent economic climate in post-World War I France.
Zaki Haidar, Visiting Lecturer in Arabic is revising his doctoral dissertation, entitled “Enchanting the Mountain: Spatial Poetics and Politics in Fictional Narratives of Jabal Lubnān/Mount Lebanon” (University of Pennsylvania). Zaki notes, “I am also particularly drawn by the opportunity to discuss the transformative aspects of conflict, as the Lebanese Civil War (ca. 1975-1990), with its consequent destruction and dislocation, can be read as a significant catalyst for narrative innovation.”
Paul Petzschmann, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science will complete an article on the role of political thought and political thinkers in the post-war occupation, de-Nazification and reconstruction of Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War. He will show how these scholars and students of administration dealt with the constraints of working within a military bureaucracy.
Ron Rodman, Dye Family Professor of Music will undertake a study of the evolution of multimedia in World War I. His work next year will include a lecture and concert by a Vaudeville style orchestra that will perform music with accompanying slides and films dealing with the topic of the war.
Noah Salomon, Assistant Professor of Religion, will work on three projects that seek to upend theories about the causal relationship between religion and violence. Instead of looking at how religion leads to conflict, Salomon will examine how conflict has led to the production of new forms of religion, both as a response to violence and as a means of furthering regimes of power. Using post-(1989-2005) Civil War Sudan, post-independence South Sudan, and the global War on Terror as data sets, Salomon will pay particular attention to the way in which Islam has been reconfigured to meet the logics of state and international governance, and the tensions and dissonances involved in this process.
Kathryn Steed, Assistant Professor of Classical Languages will be working on two closely related projects. She will complete revisions on her first book manuscript, which centers on the political effects of the wars of the 80s and 70s BCE that extended throughout the Roman world. In addition, she will work on an article that examines the figure of Gnaeus Pompey, the great Roman general of this era.
Dana Strand, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of French and the Humanities will write a paper, “(Re)Imagining la Grande Guerre in French Film,” which explores the ways in which French films about World War I have, throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries, contributed to defining (and redefining) the place the War occupies in the collective imagination of the nation.